Economic burden of health care in severe mental illnesses: Indian perspective

Mental health problems impose sizeable public health burden across the world and contribute to the huge economic burden at the Individual, community and national level. Serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are disabling conditions, which have their onset in early adulthood leads to sub-optimal productivity. Also unlike other medical illnesses, severe and protracted mental illnesses pose more indirect burden that is way beyond the scope of existing government provided free health services. But still in developing countries like India, budget for the mental disorders gets thwarted underneath the huge burden of communicable diseases which appear of paramount importance in mortality census. There is need of nationwide burden assessment studies and effective health policy planning to be tuned in accordance with the available evidence of huge economic burden of mental disorders.